I was born in Berlin Spandau, and had a sister five years
younger than myself. Mother and Father came from Hungary. Father came
to Berlin for better job opportunities. He was a scientist in
physics. My mother was a mum and a wife. My father was half Jewish -
his father was Jewish. Well I started school about 1938. I saw very
little of my father. I knew that he worked for the Air Ministry. I
knew that we had Jewish relations. I know two aunts, what we called
aunts, definitely went away. I knew exactly what was going on. I saw
it in the streets almost every day. I didn't have to wear the yellow
star. There were Jewish shops with windows smashed, and great big
writings all over the shops, horrible writings like "Jewish Pigs",
that sort of thing. It was very unpleasant. It used to make my
stomach almost hit my knees because you used to think "I wonder when
it will be our turn". But our turn never came. Those jack boots, when
you heard them marching, we had those funny streets with cobbles
still and it made a specific noise when those boots came over. And
then we used to hear the rattling of the door, the hammering of the
door... and there was some poor devil being taken away.... No, that
was not a nice time.

School changed some... because we had sort of drummed into us - I
suppose it was politics. No! It was more than that, it was
propaganda. I remember having to sit in this park. Every detail of
Hitler's life, all his doings from the time for the first world war
were sort of drummed into us. We used to sit up in the trees and try
to learn this tripe.

I knew about the concentration camps. They called them labour
camps, but they weren't. They had to work I know, but they were
terrible. They used to starve them. The labour camp we could see on
the way to school. I don't think it was a very important one. Not
like Auschwitz or anything like that. It just had Strasse camp.
That's all it was called. I don't think that was a concentration
camp, that probably, literally was a labour camp, but they starved
those people, and towards the end of the war, the end of 1944, my
mother took a job. Because we never saw my father after that time, he
was working away, we never ever saw him and she took a job. There was
a factory near our school, and she worked as a sort of doctor's
helper, where anybody hurt a finger, something like this, and this is
when she saw these people. And she found one of the young men, he was
only a kid, and he was rummaging around in a waste bin and she saw
him pick out, like a herring bone and wolf this down. Oh she couldn't
stick that. And they only had rags wrapped wound their feet, they had
no shoes. So when she came home she packed up a few things and she
threw it over the big wire fence, hoping that nobody saw her - but
they did. That's when she nearly collared it. And if she had been
Jewish in any way, if only a part, they would have taken her without
a doubt. They sent the police. It was Friday evening. It was
frightening for the simple reason that she had told us what she had
done, and they came to interview her. The following day my mother was
taken, to the police station I presume, I don't know but she came
back! I don't know what she said to them, she never told us. All she
said was "It's all over, I got away with it this time, but if I do it
again it won't be so easy." That's all.

You see when she worked in this little doctor's office where
these people came, the people who worked in the factory, to have
their injuries attended to. The doctor was the doctor for all, the
factory and the labour camp, the labour camp belonged to the factory,
they worked in the factory. Already before that they had people
coming in, these Russians, whatever they were. Ukrainians they were,
I'm sure they were. Because of the diet or the non-existent diet they
used to come up in big boils everywhere. And she told me a story
which I remember very distinctly, that they gave one of these young
boys a tube of something to put on his boil, some paste... I will
remember it to day I die, because he ate it. He did! He ate it! It
makes my inside go all funny at the moment, to be honest, to think
about it. Because, today, to look back, I'm more afraid today than I
was at the time. Because now I feel what could have happened. To all
of us.

In Berlin, the German army was being pushed back. Oh, that was a
peculiar time, because one minute we had the Germans on our front
doorstep and half an hour later there were Russians there, and it was
reversed again. They were in and out... We were on the front. We
spent 17 days in the cellar, and there were 29 people, I think there
were, in the cellar. It was an apartment house. Now, the story I am
telling you now is absolutely and totally true and I must have had a
guardian angel all my life. Food ran out because when we were all
herded into the cellars, the Russians started bombarding the streets,
and the Germans bombarded us and, oh God, it was dreadful... we were
shut away in the cellar. We shut ourselves away - the grownups shut
us away. We actually hid together down there. Slept together for 17
days. Everyone took as much food down as they had. Well, when the
occupation kept changing, one minute you had the Germans, the next
minute you had the Russians, then the Germans were back. Well, what
the Russian soldiers did, any food that was in the stores, in the
shops were either taken away or destroyed - scattered all over the
ground, horses went through it, what they couldn't use they
destroyed, So, when the Germans came in again, and we thought we
could go to the shop and buy what we didn't have or get what we
didn't have, there was nothing to be had. Consequently a time came
during those 17 days when we were very, very hungry. I was about 14
then. So there was a young boy, about a year older than myself and he
said to me, "Would you be game, if we went out of that front door and
went across to the barracks and see what's in the cellars?" Of course
we weren't allowed to go, we had to do this secretly. So I said,
"Yes, I'll come." So, we went. In the meantime, mind you, there was
firing going on all the time, we were being shelled. It was about -
well, we lived like here (indicating out of the window) and the
barracks were there, about 80 metres. So, we went across. We got
there without being hurt, under shellfire, and we got into the
cellars.

We got into the cellar and do you know, it was just like an
Aladdin's cave. We found bread, sausages, oh, all sorts of food
there, even sweets! And we had nothing to carry it in. So he said,
"I'll tell you what. You stay, and I'll pop back and get a washing
basket and we'll fill that up." Well, he did. He came back with this
empty washing basket. They didn't know we'd gone, in the house,
because the cellars under our apartment house are like a maze. So, he
came back with this basket, and we filled it with these things. Black
bread which keeps for a long time. Rye bread, all wrapped in silver
foil. So, we packed the basket full of all this and on the top we put
a few, you know, nice bits which weren't really necessary. And we had
just finished packing.... when the door opened and a Russian came
in.... MY God! Well, believe you me if I had a weak heart, I would
have had a heart attack! He was the biggest bloke I'd ever seen in
all my life. And he had one of those horrible moustaches like a
walrus! He looked so fierce. Well, he must have seen how scared we
were....but he was ever so kind.... he explained to us that he had
children at home as well, so would we scoot - because in a minute a
lot of others would be along and they might not be so understanding.
So, between us, a handle each of this basket we go back to the house
under shellfire. My mother nearly died of fright when she saw us. But
we fed the whole household until we were let out of the cellars. Then
they turned the water off, we didn't have any water. We had to walk 2
miles with a bucket, all under sniper fire, because by that time they
were shooting from behind chimneys... because the last Nazis, well
you couldn't call them an army. They were just children, some of them
were only 15 years old. They hid behind the chimney pots and shot at
anything moving in the street.

I did that mostly because there wasn't anybody else really for us,
for my family. From each family one person would go. My father wasn't
there, I don't think my mother could do it. My sister was too little,
so I did it. And I'll tell you what else I did in those days, I
walked, when we came out of those cellars food was still very short,
and potatoes were almost non existent, and I walked 37 miles to a
farmhouse of some friends we had in Strausberg and they filled a
rucksack full of potatoes for me and 2 duck eggs on the top as a
bonus, and I walked 37 miles back. Oh God! It took me days. But there
were lots of people doing it. I wasn't on my own. They were all
strangers to me, I didn't know them, but we sort of grouped together.
And by the time I got back home I had blisters the size of a fist
underneath my feet. But it was worth every bit of it, because we had
something to eat for a few days. You see it tided us over for a
period of time which was the worst. Then gradually things got better.
They got adjusted.

I had my hair shorn off when we had to move out of our
house. Well, you had to go to wherever you could find anybody would
take you in, because they took your house over you see. My mum had a
little handcart, and she filled it with the most necessary
belongings. Then she cut my hair right off like a boys and I had to
wear leather trousers which she borrowed from somebody who had a son.
Because the raping was terrible, they raped anything from 8 - 80, and
that is a fact. My sister looked much younger than she was, we were
both dressed as boys, just in case.

I moved to Exeter in 1952. I raised my family in Exeter. They went
to local schools, so they are native. You know, I have never felt
strange in this country, ever. From the day I got here I've never
felt strange. It is extraordinary, believe you me, because for a
start I've never met anybody that has been nasty because I was a
foreigner. I was friendly with a newscaster, he used to say things
like, "When you were brought up did you hate the English?" and I used
to say, "No. Why?" It seemed such an idiotic thing. He said, "Well,
weren't you taught to hate them?" I said, "No." "Oh!" he said, "We
were taught to hate the Germans." I said, "Well, surely that depends
on the family you are brought up in?" During the war I had no idea
about concentration camps until my mother had this close shave, so I
didn't really know anything about that..

You know, people say, "Have you been in Berlin during the
bombing? Oh, my poor child!" and I couldn't think what they meant. I
loved it - it was exciting... We made amusement out of things that
probably other people would call tragic. Like collecting shrapnel.
Shrapnel pieces, we had a beautiful collection and we used to swap
them. You find it exciting when things go smoothly until it stands on
your doorstep. For example, you see somebody beating up an old man
simply because he is wearing a yellow star - now that is on your
doorstep, because you are actually seeing it. It didn't concern my
family, he wasn't part of my family, but he was another human being,
he was somebody's father and grandfather - do you see? And that is
when it makes you feel sick. So, you don't glorify the war, believe
you me - you might collect all sorts of paraphernalia but you do that
possibly, because what else can you do as a child?

Well, at first I just wouldn't believe it, and then I went
to an exhibition about the concentration camps in Berlin. I went
there with the school. That shattered me....That was just after 1945,
just after the war finished. I can't really say much for others, what
they felt and thought...but it totally and utterly stunned me - to
see lampshades made of human skin .....and that sort of thing. I
couldn't understand that human beings could be capable of this. I
couldn't, honestly. I couldn't understand.

It was Gypsies too - very much so. Why? What had they ever done to
anybody, I don't know. What had the Jews ever done to them? Every
community, every country has always been grateful to their Jewish
community economy wise... they needed them! And so did Germany! But
you know, reading through the history books, it was no different in
other countries, I mean they didn't do the same thing, but they were
never liked. But why? This is what I can't understand. I know that
Hitler had this bee in his bonnet about a totally Aryan race, right?
A super race. Well that was idiotic. I reckon he was afraid of the
Jews.

After seeing that exhibition of the concentration camps in
Berlin in 1945 I felt bitterly ashamed. People that I had hidden
amongst could have done that - that feeling persists. When you see it
on the television I still feel guilty. You see, when you think of all
those millions of children...

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